A cruel enemy in Iraq

Houston Chronicle:

In spring 2004, seven Iraqis who had been brutalized by Saddam Hussein's regime came to Houston, where they got their amputated hands replaced with prosthetic devices. The men quickly became a local and national symbol of hope and healing in the early stages of the war.

In fact, after an Oval Office meeting with President Bush, during which the men so impressed the president that they became a triumphal note in his speeches on the war, they returned to Iraq to share their country's new future.

But since they were warmly embraced by Houston, their lives have become a harrowing, capsule version of the collapse of their homeland into danger, death and despair.

Some of the men are trying to get out of Iraq and possibly return to the United States. But they are finding little success in the bewildering process of escaping Iraq as political refugees.

"At this time I'm confined to my home. I cannot leave it as I fear for my life. Even the children are suffering to be enclosed all the time," one of the men, Nazar Joudi, said in a recent letter to an American friend.

Another of the seven, Alla'a Shubbar, described to the Houston Chronicle a frightening series of near misses with insurgents trying to kill them.

Shubbar said by e-mail and telephone that he had to give up his textile store in Baghdad because customers feared being caught in the kill zone if he were targeted by insurgents aware of his American ties.

"Most people who live in Baghdad have a difficult life," Shubbar said in a telephone interview from Baghdad. "But I am in particular danger. The terrorists may target me and my friends and relatives more than others."

Shubbar, 30, said his home was damaged in a mortar attack which he thought was an effort to kill him and his family.

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There is much more. The story takes an unfortunate, what have you done for me lately tone. However, it does point out the nature of the enemy in Iraq. The same people responsible for cutting off these hands still want to cut off them men's life and association with other Iraqis. Their evil must not be allowed to prevail.